Derrida’s
‘Signature Event Context’
A
Critical Summary
Introduction
The essay, “Signature
Event Context”, by Jacques Derrida was originally written for a conference on
the theme of “Communication” in Montreal, August, 1971, where he explicates on
his theory of speech and writing.
This essay hence proves
to be one of Derrida’s clearest explications on two key notions that pervade
his entire work. The first is the notion of iterability, and the second is the
notion of logocentrism – two key notions that are definitive and integral
components of western thought!
To Derrida, speech is
also a kind of writing. In this respect, his theory is in every way a sharp
contrast to Marshall McLuhan’s concept of ‘writing’ and the media.
The Epigraph to the
Essay
Derrida begins his essay
with an epigraph by Austin, taken from his most influential work, titled, How
to Do Things with Words.
It goes thus -
"Still confining
ourselves for simplicity to spoken utterance”, which serves to foreground the
logocentric assumptions of the statement, and thereby establish a hierarchy of
meaning.
The dictionary, for
example, practices this logocentric assumption, in which, the primary meaning
of a word is mentioned first, followed by its secondary meanings.
However, to Derrida, words
are necessarily polysemic!
So Derrida then dwells
on the polysemic meaning of communication.
‘Communication’ as a
Vehicle or as a Means of Transport
Derrida then asks if the
word or signifier ‘communication’ corresponds to a concept that is ‘communicable’?
If so, then one must ask
oneself, what does the word [or signifier] ‘communication’ communicate?
Does it communicate a
determinate content,
an identifiable meaning,
or
a describable value.
Derrida then
predetermines the concept of communication as a vehicle, a means of transport
or transitional medium of a meaning!
Communication &
Context
The word ‘communication’
can be reduced by the limits of what is called a ‘context’.
The
‘context’ restricts the meaning of the word.
According
to Derrida, a context is never absolutely determinable!
The
notion of writing can only be seen as a means of communication, that extends across time and space. In other words
writing merely extends the domain of oral or gestural communication.
Limitations
of Oral Communication
In fact,
writing offers a sort of ‘homogeneous space’ of communication, because, in
locutory communication, the voice or gesture would encounter therein a restriction
or a factual limit, an empirical boundary of space and of time, while writing,
in the same time and in the same space, would be capable of ‘relaxing’ those
limits and hence the unity and wholeness of meaning would not be affected in
its essence!
To
Derrida, then, traditional Western metaphysical philosophy is therefore an ‘extension’
of speech.
Writing
Does not Change the Content of the Oral Tradition
Writing
to Derrida, (in contrast to McLuhan’s theory) does not alter or change the
content of the oral tradition, since the same ideas in the oral tradition can
be communicated in a ‘vehicular way’ through writing, in the written tradition
as well, without in any way changing the content!
One of
the main axioms of American Media Studies is that, writing has its own biases,
when contrasted with the oral tradition. And this is exactly where Derrida
differs from Marshall McLuhan.
Derrida’s
Attack on Condillac’s Theory of Writing
Then he
proceeds to attack Condillac’s theory of writing, by citing from Condillac’s Essay
on the Origin of Human Knowledge, in which he portrays writing as a ‘natural
development’ of the knowledge, and the ideas of the oral tradition, first by the
drawing of pictures, then pictographic writing, and then gradually grows more
abstract, and thereby becomes a seamless extension of the oral tradition.
In the
Western metaphysical tradition, writing has always been addressed to an absent
audience - the primary difference between writing and speech, in the Western
tradition, something that Derrida contests, vehemently against.
According
to Derrida, Condillac has not discussed the idea of absence in terms of the
centre.
For
example, when someone reads a particular author’s text, the author is ‘absent’
to the reader, and the author might have been dead as well. Therefore, there is
a certain ‘non-presence’.
In the ‘logocentric
tradition’, logocentrism is the metaphysics of presence, through which absence
is seen a supplement to it. Derrida hence develops his own theory of media
here, based on the ‘absence’, a kind of ontology of absence, that displaces the
concept of writing, and reframes it with his theory of differance – as an
endless chain of significations.
Sign,
Imagination & Memory
The sign
comes into being at the same time as imagination and memory, the moment it is
necessitated by the absence of the object from present perception.
Memory consists
in nothing but the power of recalling the signs of our ideas, or the
circumstances that accompanied them; and this power only takes place by virtue
of the analogy of the signs.
A
written sign is hence proffered in the absence of the receiver.
Absence:
Merely a Distance Presence
At
the moment when an author is writing, the receiver may be absent from the
author’s field of present perception. ‘But is not this absence merely a distant
presence, one which is delayed or which, in one form or another, is idealized in
its representation?’ asks Derrida.
My
Communication Must be Repeatable-Iterable!
In
order for my “written communication” to retain its function as writing, i.e.,
its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of
any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable-iterable
in the absolute absence of the receiver, he says!
A
writing that is not structurally readable-iterable-beyond the death of the
addressee would not be writing.
To
Write is to Produce a ‘Mark’!
A
mark is a sign that has been divested of the metaphysics of presence.
Therefore,
‘to write’ is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which
is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in
principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and
to be rewritten.
It is the structure of the ‘mark’ that makes it writing as such!
And the
mark of writing is its iterability! Its legibility.
Writing
has to be legible. In the absence of a centre, I should still be able to read
and understand what the centre intended or meant in sending this message.
Writing
has to be iterable or legible in the sense that it should be able to be
divorced from its originary source, from the source of the author, or the
context that originated it.
Derrida
then takes the concept of absence and iterability and extends it across all
other media.
The
Signifier is No Longer Grounded by the Signified
Speech
therefore, according to Derrida is not at all different from writing, it is
also separable from its original context. The signifiers in both speech and
writing are separable from their original context, both in speech and writing.
And they are capable of being inscribed and being grafted into other contexts.
The signifier is no longer grounded by the signified, since all the signifieds
now exist outside the context of the metaphysically encoding systems.
This
is in sharp contrast to the MacLuhan idea of Media Studies, in which MacLuhan
says that, every medium has its own bias. Thus Derrida rescues ‘writing’ from
domination and tyranny by the metaphysics of presence in the logocentric
tradition.
Then
Derrida moves on to Austin’s theory of the distinction between ‘performative
utterances’ and ‘constative utterances’.
Constative
utterances are assertive statements, classical ‘assertions’, generally
considered as true or false ‘descriptions’, of facts, whereas, performative utterances
make something happen! (from the English ‘performative’, allowing to accomplish
something through speech itself).
Performative
Utterances make ‘Something Happen!’
Although
Derrida is quite appreciative of Austin’s attempt to liberate performative
statements from the true/false dichotomy, he critiques Austin for depending too
much on the notions of intention, context, and convention.
To
Derrida, an utterance can only “succeed” if its formulation is repeatable,
or iterable, or if it can be identified as a “citation”, conforming to a
predictable structure, at some point in the past!
Derrida
extends this concept of iterability to written texts, and gives signatures
as an example. He claims that in order for a signature to be valid, it must
contain the qualities of being repeatable and imitable, conforming to a
predictable structure, at some point in the past!
The
signature anchors the performative utterance in the written version. The
signature supplements or compensate the living presence of the author, and
thereby authorises it!
At
the same time, it also indicates a future presence, with the possibility of the
reproducibility of the signature, as an authority of the document that’s being
signed.
One
reason why he ironically ends the paper by signing his own name, by saying,
The-written-text
of this oral communication was to be delivered to the Association des societes
de philosophie de langue francaise, ahead of the meeting. That dispatch should
thus have been signed. Which I do, and counterfeit, here. Where? There. J.D.
Conclusion
Speech
and writing are two forms of media that are doing the same thing! Both based on
the same model of differance, the endless play of signifying chains based on
the iterability and possibility of removing them from their original contexts,
of deauthorising both the signifiers from their original signifieds, and
generating entirely new contexts of meaning around them. As such, there is
basically no difference between speech and writing, concludes Derrida.
